UUIDs (Universally Unique Identifiers) appear in virtually every modern application — database primary keys, API resource IDs, session tokens, file names, correlation IDs. But there are several UUID versions, they have different tradeoffs, and auto-increment integers are often the better choice. Here is a practical breakdown.
What Is a UUID?
A UUID is a 128-bit identifier represented as 32 hexadecimal digits in 5 groups separated by hyphens:
550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000
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